145 Years Ago Today at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

- President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

For more on Lincoln, visit “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln” at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs until July 5, 2009, and is part of a yearlong Smithsonian-wide celebration of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. 

Abraham Lincoln /Mathew Brady, 1864/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Comments

[Patriciadc]

I wrote about the Lincoln exhibit on my blog and are interested in others' take on the name. A great show; a somber environment.

I reported a typo on the NPG's online Civil War section about Lincoln but the statement that the war began in April, 1865 rather than 1861 has not been corrected.

[National Portrait Gallery]

Thank you for spotting the error -- it has been corrected. Also, thanks for your interest in the exhibit and writing about it in your blog.
- Ben, NPG Web Developer